


One of My Own

by Zauzat



Category: Star Trek
Genre: M/M, Post-Narada
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-26
Updated: 2012-10-26
Packaged: 2017-11-17 01:56:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zauzat/pseuds/Zauzat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Narada: Pike is helping Kirk with the outfitting of the Enterprise. When his anger and guilt clashes with Kirk's own issues, the confrontation takes them somewhere neither man expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One of My Own

**Author's Note:**

> Beta: as ever, the lovely imachar  
> Written for: mightyyawp for the Happy Trekmas 2011 fic exchange.

"And of course you have the hydroponics provisioning requirements here somewhere?" demanded Pike.

"Er, yes? I think so... Hang on...." Kirk began to to flick quickly through the myriad of documents loaded on the PADD in his hand.

"You need to be better organised than this, Captain," snapped Pike. "The universe isn't going to hang around waiting for you to get your admin in order. It's not all drama and heroics up there, you know."

"Yes sir," said Kirk, his mobile face held rigidly under control, the words spoken through gritted teeth. He abandoned the PADD he'd been holding and grabbed one of the other three spread on the table between them. Pike waited as it became increasingly clear that Kirk didn't have the required document on his system, his fingers doing a slow three-part drum roll on the table. He offered the younger man no way out from the growing discomfort of the silence.

Kirk fiddled with the PADDs for several minutes longer before his shoulders finally slumped in defeat. "It's not here, sir," he admitted, "I'll have to find out what's become of it."

"Not good enough," snapped Pike, slamming his hand down on the table, making the PADDs jump. "This is not the Academy, son. There's no free ride here based on your name and your sex appeal. This the real world and you need to shape up pretty damn fast!"

Kirk's head snapped up. Pike noted dispassionately the dark circles under his eyes and the clean edge of his high cheekbones that suggested that the boy had not yet put back much of the weight he'd lost during the stressful maiden voyage of the Enterprise. "I've _never_ traded on my name. _Sir_."

"Right. You've made captain before even graduating from the Academy based purely on your brilliance."

Kirk's nostrils flared and his generous mouth pinched down into a tight white line. "I've made captain based on my orders. It's not as if I went lobbying for it. As you well know!"

"And you think those orders were given on merit, _Captain_?" He watched Kirk's expressive eyes narrow and harden, watched the long fingers tighten on the edge of the nearest PADD until his knuckles whitened.

Pike had spent weeks going through the refitting and outfitting of the Enterprise with Kirk. After all, the young officer needed all the help he could get. And it wasn't as if Pike had anything else to do with his time. He was still assigned to what everyone referred to as 'recovery' leave and what Pike privately thought of as 'hedging our bets while waiting to see if he's too damaged to be of future use'. He hated the long empty hours that lay between the mornings of exhausting, humiliating physical therapy and the nights punctuated with insomnia or nightmares. Working on training the new captain of the Enterprise offered him a focus and a distraction. Of course, it also offered a vicious twist of the knife in the wound every single day, a wound that was showing no sign of healing. 

When they'd commenced on this collaboration Pike had sincerely believed he could do this. It was right, it was needed, it was urgent. It was his duty. And it was - of course - very much his singular area of expertise, the fitting out of the Enterprise for a deep-space tour. When his therapist had warned him that the anger he was proud of not feeling would eventually surface, he'd dismissed her warnings as better suited to weaker individuals. He'd been trained to withstand torture, and he'd had to put that training into practise more than once in his past. This was no different.

Except that sitting across this table from the child _hero_ who'd stolen his ship based on little more than disobeying orders and blind luck, based on a fractured Federation desperate for the reassurance of _saviours_ , the anger was welling up in his throat like vomit, the bitter bile fed from a bottomless pit in his stomach he'd not even realised was there. Now that his physical recovery was well advanced, it seemed his mind finally had the time to discover all the other ways in which he was compromised. He'd been suppressing the fury for weeks now, trying to swallow it back down; trying to mitigate it with hard exercise in therapy; trying to rationalise how it wasn't Kirk's fault that all this had happened; trying pointless attempts at meditation that just left his mind running on the treadmill of anger and despair. With every day that effort of control seemed to become even harder. 

What he really wanted to do was to go out running, pounding through the hills of Muir Woods, jumping from rock to rock, dodging the treacherous tree roots, using his speed and power and dexterity to negotiate the narrow forest trails. Except that he had none of those things now. Instead he had two legs that lurched and trembled and gave way if he stood upright for too long. He was free of the chair thanks to the use of exo-skeleton supports and a stick and with a slightly wider cut of uniform pants there was no sign of the exo system, but still, _cripple_ stuttered scathingly through his mind with each awkward step. 

"I believe I'm supposed to simply follow my orders, sir, not go questioning them?" said Kirk with poorly hidden sarcasm. " _Yours not to reason why, yours but to do and die._ Isn't that how it goes?"

"You are hardly the poster boy for that philosophy, Kirk. Cheating on tests, disobeying orders--"

Kirk angrily cut across Pike's rant before he could gain traction, his porcelain facade of obedience beginning to crack. "My ability to _interpret_ orders might actually have something to do with my precipitate promotion. And... you know--" Kirk broke off, having just enough common sense left not to go there.

_And your continuing survival_ Kirk didn't say but the truth of that hovered poisonously between them. It wasn't enough that Pike had failed to protect Vulcan - had let six billion Federation beings go their deaths on his watch - and had then given up the protection codes to Earth's defences, leaving a bunch of cadets to ride to the rescue of his planet. After all that, rather than the death he privately thought he'd deserved, he'd been rescued single-handedly by Kirk like some maiden in distress and brought back to Earth as exhibit A in evidence of the glorious heroism of the young captain. 

Pike had been widely complimented on the grace with which he had publicly handed over command of the Enterprise to Kirk, the incident lauded as an example of everyone in the Federation pulling together for the greater good. It was a good thing no one had been privy to him throwing up in the handicapped bathroom immediately afterwards. He privately considered the handover one of the best pieces of acting of his long and varied career. 

Infuriated at himself for the weakness of endlessly dwelling on what he could not change, he pulled his attention back to the young captain across the table, now clearly simmering with suppressed anger. Pike was suddenly profoundly tired of the exhausting control and careful lies that they maintained around each other. He was tired of being a dead-weight on the service that he had loved and failed, good for nothing now besides PR campaigns and being Kirk's secretary. He wanted a fight and he wanted it now. 

"Promotion is one thing, Kirk, it's the easy thing. Performance - now that's what will actually count. Five years in command of the flagship is very different from some lucky breaks and heedless courage. Not being able to find your own paperwork isn't much of a start."

"Oh fuck you." Kirk surged to his feet with an easy grace that sent another spike of jealousy through Pike. "Everyone's expecting you to do my admin anyway. They all think I got promoted because I've clearly been sucking your dick right through the Academy. Do you want me to make that true, sir? Do you want me to grovel in thanks at your feet for having been shoved into an impossible position as flagship captain? Hated by every other officer in the Fleet. Everyone, from my commanders to my crew thinking it's a PR stunt. Fucking nowhere to go from here but down!" 

The fact that he was well aware of the difficulty of Kirk's position - and of the poisonous rumours spreading among the Starfleet officers now returned from the Laurentian system - added an extra bitterness to Pike's instinctive reply. He was so sick of having to run interference in this disaster; so sick of displaying grace and gratitude, of hiding guilt and depression. "Giving up before you've even broken orbit? Back to flipping off authority figures as your mission in life? Pathetic, Kirk. If you're going to need my help that badly, maybe you should invest in a few favours." Pike deliberately slouched in his seat, let his thighs splay open, a primitive display of sexual assertion straight from his lizard brainstem.

A small corner of Pike's rational mind was screaming at him to pull himself together, pointing out that this was verging on sexual harassment, pointing out that Kirk only needed to walk away to easily establish himself as the better man. But this meltdown of all his rigorous mechanisms of control now seemed to have a life of its own. Without him noticing, the roller-coaster had crept past the apex and was plunging down into the abyss of self-destruction. Nothing less that a reversal of the laws of gravity would stop him now.

But Kirk did not walk away. Instead he took a few long strides around the table and fluidly sunk to his knees within the vee of Pike's open thighs, looking up at the Admiral with flinty eyes. "Is this what you want, _sir_? We both know this is the one thing I'm famous for being good at. I don't need any leg-up from the Admiralty to prove myself here." The bitterness of Kirk's words rung alarm bells in the shrinking corner of rationality in Pike's mind. It seemed the young captain was having problems of his own coping with recent events. But rationality was now an island under siege from a rapidly rising tide of anger. 

Kirk took advantage of Pike's momentary speechlessness to grab the other man's groin with a large warm hand and knead the soft cloth and the soft cock beneath it. Pike's immediate instinct was to push the young man away. He'd never been a fan of 'grab and grope' as a way to open a sexual encounter. He considered himself considerably more sophisticated than that. However, he was overcome by a sudden desperate curiosity. He'd not touched himself since his _visit_ to the Narada, nor had he had an involuntary erection in that time. Oh, he'd been told it should work. He'd been handed literature to explain the impact of surgery, of medication, of torture on his sexual drive. He'd even been offered the services of a sexual surrogate by his therapist. He had silently, furiously, ignored all of it. He'd never needed help with sex before. He had no intention of starting now.

Nevertheless he was desperate to know if it would actually work. This encounter was already far beyond anything that could be considered acceptable practise within Starfleet. If he was going to commit career suicide, he might as well try to get an erection out of it. And if he didn't, well, he had the verbal skills to shift the blame onto Kirk's unwanted manhandling. Thinking furiously that he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, he dropped his head back and closed his eyes, concentrating only on the sensations rising from his groin. Let Kirk made his own decisions about whether to stay or go. 

The first subtle tingling that he associated with his own arousal were lost in Kirk's rough handling but after a few moments he could feel the swell and surge of his cock coming to life, thickening and lengthening within the confines of his pants. The swell of relief he felt was almost unbearable, hot and sweet with gratitude that in this one respect at least, he was still a man. He'd not appreciated just how worried he had been about this one thing. With the relief came a dampening of his anger. He knew he needed to stop this encounter, to get Kirk up off his knees. But it felt so good, the deft rub and twist of nimble fingers over the growing outline of his erection, the rich pool of heat pulsing in his groin. After the long weeks of pain, he wanted the uncomplicated relief of this so badly. 

Still, even in his anger and trauma, there were places he could not live with going. He allowed himself one more long moment of pleasure and then lifted his head, opening his eyes to look down at Kirk. The young man's face was set and grim, turned away from the deft massage being given by his hand. Pike caught that face by the chin, pulling Kirk round to look up at him. "Yes sir," Kirk started bitterly. "One sucking com--"

"No!" Pike was startled to realise that Kirk actually intended to go through with this, despite clearly feeling both betrayed and demeaned by it. Pike wondered if that was how Kirk felt about his promotion. He put a hand over Kirk's hand on his groin, stilling the nimble fingers, letting them both feel the pulse of Pike's cock beneath the fabric of his pants. With his other hand he released Kirk's chin and ran his fingers gently up the side of the young man's face. He let himself look - really look - at the eyes red-rimmed with strain, at the dark smudges below them and the too-pale skin around them. 

There was no way back, he knew that. He could no more undo the disaster of this encounter than he could recreate the planet of Vulcan or eliminate the damage to his nervous system. The question now was whether he could find a way forward that might mitigate the consequences. "You are a captain, Kirk, whatever the reasons or the circumstances. Get up off your knees and take charge. If you want, walk out of here and we'll try again tomorrow with the Enterprise. If you have any genuine interest in staying, dump me on the bed and fuck me."

Kirk stared at him, his pretty mouth slack in astonishment. Pike doubted it was the kind of apology that his therapist would approve of but it was the best he could offer in the circumstances. He found a wry amusement in having so comprehensively surprised the young captain. 

"Well, hell," muttered Kirk to himself. "Leap without looking. Here we go again." He surged to his feet, grabbed Pike under the armpits and pulled him out of his chair so that they stood, toe to toe, nose to nose. Kirk's hands slid down Pike's flanks, round to the small of his back and then down once more to grasp the curve of his buttocks. Kirk pulled hard. Pike was only an inch or so taller than him and their groins met, with Pike pathetically flattered to have his own half-hard erection bump into clear evidence of another swelling cock. Clearly he wasn't quite as unappealing as he had often felt recently. 

Kirk nuzzled roughly at his neck, licking at the soft skin, working his way up the tendon in small nips, before hesitating. "I haven't been with anyone since, you know--" Kirk mumbled against Pike's ear. When Pike pulled back to look at him with surprise, he shrugged defensively. "There've been all these disaster groupies, following me around, offering their services, their _gratitude_. It's not been much of a turn-on."

"Not a problem that I've had to deal with, trapped in my hospital bed," muttered Pike, mouthing at the skin by Kirk's ear, a move which conveniently let him hide his face as he continued, "I've not, you know, either. There may be.... uh, some landmines." 

"Right, so... an unexpected mission into uncharted territory with no clear guidelines. Just another day in Starfleet then," said Kirk as he arched his neck obligingly against Pike's mouth.

"Let's leave Starfleet out of this, shall we," retorted Pike, biting down hard on the fragile skin. "Less talk, more action, if you don't mind, Kirk. I'm beginning to wonder where the hell your wonder-slut reputation comes from." 

Kirk stiffened against him. "Fine, right, bedroom then," he said shortly, towing Pike by the arm across the lounge of Pike's apartment, where they had been meeting daily to work on Enterprise business. 

Pike felt little guilt for offending Kirk. He desperately didn't want them to wander into the realms of feelings. He didn't want the unexpected camaraderie that had blossomed out of the little confession of their mutual abstinence to grow into anything significant. He wanted a quick hard fuck, without discussions, without explanations. He hoped it would serve as both an apology and a distraction and then tomorrow they could pretend all this had never happened. 

"Strip," said Kirk, already pulling his shirt over his head. "Then on your bed, on your back." Pike considered pointing out that nakedness wasn't really required for the mechanics of fucking. But then he'd pushed Kirk to take control so perhaps he'd best keep quiet at this point. He took off his clothes with mechanical efficiency, grateful that Kirk made no comment when he sat down to remove the exo-skeleton support that provided extra strength to his weakened legs. He then shuffled backwards onto the bed, piling pillows up behind his head before lying down and deliberately pulling his knees up and outwards. 

Kirk simply stood at the foot of the bed, stark naked in all his youthful glory, and looked him over. Pike held steady under the shuttered gaze, refusing to flinch despite his self-consciousness about the red marks left on his thighs and hips by the exo-skeleton. At least being on his back hid the worst of the scars from the operations. He drank in Kirk's acres of creamy skin, the understated swell of muscles designed for work rather than for show, the trail of dark golden hair down the flat abdomen to where a rosy cock was lifting out of its nest of curls. Pike took that salute as a compliment, steadily refusing to think about how much older he was than Kirk, about the scars and creases and grey hairs that marked his many years of hard service. Kirk looked every inch the future of Starfleet and he looked like what he was - old and used up.

"Where's the lube?" demanded Kirk, clearly all business and no romance, just as Pike wanted it. He wanted no false illusions that this was anything more than a convenient fuck between two men under acute pressure, a less damaging outlet for stress and frustration than a fist-fight. He directed Kirk to the bathroom and took advantage of the moment of solitude to give his own cock a couple of rough tugs. He was painfully aware that it was neither as quick to rise or as hard to the touch as he was used to. He hoped he could get through this without embarrassment. Pike wasn't about to admit it, but he'd offered to be fucked not just in an apology but also because it guaranteed a conclusion even if his cock wilted on the job. 

Kirk returned, placed the lube on the bedcover and then sat down by Pike's feet, running a curious hand up Pike's calf. "Kirk," he began, ready to try and push the action forward, horribly conscious of how much muscle he'd lost on his legs in the weeks of enforced bed-rest. 

"Quiet," snapped Kirk. "You told me to run the show. You can shut up and take it." He did a surprisingly good imitation of a steely command voice and Pike took a deep breath and kept quiet, telling himself he could count it as part of his penance for getting them both into this mess to start with. 

Kirk remained businesslike, moving steadily up Pike's legs until he was teasing the soft skin that lay on either side of Pike's genitals. He let one hand drift down to cradle the heavy, softly-furred balls while with the other he grasped the cock above, still lying at half-mast. He held Pike's eyes for a long moment as he pumped gently, before dipping his head, leaning down and sucking the spongy head into his mouth without hesitation. Pike watched for a moment, watched the long eyelashes that hid those piercing blue eyes, watched the lean cheeks suck in around his erection. He'd fantasised about this sight a few times during Kirk's Academy years, normally when the cadet had been at his most insubordinate and irritating. He'd never expected to see it in reality.

He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. He didn't want to deal with his complicated feelings for this young man, his admiration, his jealousy, his aching fear that Starfleet was going to burn out Kirk's brilliance by this precipitous promotion. Right now he just wanted to revel in the feeling of a hot wet mouth and talented tongue coaxing his prick into glorious throbbing hardness; he wanted to let simple physical pleasure overwhelm the turmoil of his mind. Kirk took his time, sucking on the head, licking up the shaft, taking one ball and then the other into his mouth and rolling them with agonising slowness with his tongue. When a slippery finger slid down past his perineum and brushed slowly around the edge of the small pucker hidden behind it, Pike let his legs flop open in a mute surrender.

This was not what he had been anticipating. He'd expected it to be hard and fast and dirty, a punishment as much as a pleasure. But this was good too. After the torture, the operations, the physical therapy, all so different but each humiliating in its own way, this undemanding gift of gradual arousal was unwinding knots he'd not even known were there. He let himself drift in the wash of heat, afloat in a warm sea of pleasure. 

When finally his natural impatience rose up through the sexual haze, he began to push meaningfully against the questing finger that was slowly circling around his hole but Kirk simply pulled away, grabbing a thigh in each powerful hand. "We do this my way or we don't do it at all." 

The abrupt restraint of the hands sent a sudden shudder of memory rippling up Pike's spine, an echo of a room far away, now destroyed but never to be forgotten. For a moment he feared that panic might overwhelm the pleasure but Kirk, oblivious to his reaction, had sunk that velvet soft mouth back over Pike's cock. He felt the panic dissolve into an edgy arousal as his cock-head bumped against the smooth lining of Kirk's throat, Kirk's lips almost down by his balls. Hoping his shaky breathing sounded like sex-driven panting, he clenched his hands around fistfuls of the bedspread and kept the news of that little landmine to himself. 

"Sometime this century would be good, Kirk," he muttered and got a huffed laugh that echoed down his shaft for his trouble, followed by an abrupt press of two slippery fingers. The burn of opening was a delicious distraction, soon heightened by the wicked press of fingertips against his gland. He didn't bottom often, reluctant to open himself up to another person in quite such an intimate manner. He'd half forgotten what it felt like to have arousal blossoming from the inside out, like a second cock buried deep inside him. 

"You like that!" Kirk sounded unforgivably smug, presumably spurred by Pike's small involuntary moans of pleasure. Tomorrow, Pike thought. Tomorrow he'd take the boy in hand, would claw back his authority but right now this felt much too good to argue over. 

Kirk moved into position between his thighs. The young man was careful with his legs, pushing one thigh open, hooking the other leg over his shoulder, surreptitiously watching Pike's face for signs of strain or pain. Pike, discomforted by this reminder of his injuries, looked away and consoled himself that his physical therapist would be pleased by the degree of flexibility that he'd regained, even if he didn't have the control to contain the fine trembles in his legs.

Eyes closed, he tried to lose himself in the relentless stretch of his hole around Kirk's cock. It was a relief to feel something with his body that was not simply pain, a discomfort that he had chosen, rather than having it inflicted upon him. Kirk clearly knew what he was doing, pushing in slowly but steadily in little rocking thrusts, teasing his cock and balls to keep him distracted. 

Pike tried to forget that this was Kirk, that this was inappropriate, that this would have awkward consequences, tried to forget that this was _himself_ , tried to let them just be two bodies joined in shared pleasure, floating outside time and space. For a while it worked. He was lost in the slide and rub of Kirk's full cock in his ass. Kirk was taking it slow, pulling all the way out, teasing Pike's pucker with his cock-head, and then pushing back through the tight ring of muscle into the soft depths until he bottomed out, balls tight against Pike's buttocks. Pike revelled in the cascade of sensations that came with each shove. The only sound was the slap of skin on skin, hoarse breathing and rough pants. It was easy to let them be wordless ciphers for men taking their pleasure from other men, an archetype of anonymity through the ages.

Of course, Kirk just couldn't stop himself from ruining a good thing. Having apparently determined that Pike's legs were strong enough to bear their own weight, he leant forward to grasp Pike's arms by the biceps, putting much of his weight onto them as he began to talk again. The words were lost in a tumble of panic filling Pike's mind. Suddenly he was once more flat on his back, pinned down, arms restrained.... On the Narada one of the leather straps had run across his chest and his upper arms, pressed desperately tight over his ribs, not letting him draw in a full breath, the burn in his chest feeding into the fear. This was nothing like that, and yet it was just the same. _Pinned, pressed, helpless... useless, hopeless, despairing... weak, guilty, fool, traitor...._

"Sir! Chris! Are you okay? Take a breath, slow and deep. And another. That's it."

Pike didn't realise that he was hyperventilating until Kirk abruptly pulled back, releasing Pike's arms and placing his hands gently on the sides of Pike's rib cage as if he could control Pike's breathing himself. "Did I set off a flashback?" Kirk asked bluntly.

Pike would have given anything to deny it. He tried to dredge up the anger that would let him derail the moment with insults and disdain, pull him free of Kirk's concern. But he was so tired of waking up from nightmare that left him in sweat-soaked sheets, gasping for breath and so very alone. Wrapping himself around a pillow as he waited out the long hours of insomnia that always followed the nightmares. "Yeah," he managed. "Held down--" His voice trailed off. Kirk nodded. 

"I won't try that again. Maybe you on top?" he offered. Pike was grateful Kirk didn't seem inclined to over-analyse the incident, to offer meaningless reassurance or pop psychology soundbites. Neither did Kirk seem ready to just give up on the whole thing, dismiss him as damaged goods not worth the effort. "Or you could do me?" Kirk continued.

Something about the easy generosity of Kirk's response gave Pike a surge of courage. He was tired of endlessly reacting to trauma, of always being on the back foot. He desperately wanted to move forward with his life. He raised himself up on his elbows, looking at the young man now sat back on his heels between Pike's thighs. "How about we try something else," said Pike, pushing onwards before he could second guess himself. "How about you help me associate being held down with something other than _him_?"

Kirk kept his silence, looking at Pike quizzically. "I'm damned if I'm going to let him... to let Nero set the agenda for the rest of my life," continued Pike. "I'll probably need you to keep talking, though."

Kirk, to Pike's great gratitude, did not ask _are you sure_ or _is this a good idea_? He just threw his head back and laughed. "You actually _want_ me to talk more? There's a first!" Then he lent forward with easy grace, once again settling his hands over Pike's biceps but managing to put much more of his weight onto his own fingertips rather than on Pike's arms. "Let me know if it's not good." Kirk offered him a lascivious leer. "We can try one of the many other things in my spectacular repertoire."

Pike widened his eyes and gave an exasperated sigh. Kirk laughed and pushed back in with one long brutal shove that set stars spinning for Pike. "Oh my god, but you feel so good. Just made for my cock, your hot tight ass is the best thing ever, you're perfect! Of course I'm more perfect though. Just like those t-shirts you can buy in Rio, you know? _I'm not just perfect. I'm Argentinian_. That's me. Not that I'm Argentinian, of course. But I guess you know that. Farm boy, that's me, me and the animals back home in Iowa and then there you were in the god-damned bar, whistling like it was an Olympic sport and just so cool you were flaming hot..."

Kirk was off on a stream-of-consciousness ramble designed to remind Pike with every word that he was not on the Narada. He was home and safe and being deliciously fucked by someone he trusted with his life, even if that truth still annoyed him. The body above him kept him sheltered and protected, the weight on his arms grounded him to his own world and its miraculous survival. This was a gift rather than a threat, a choice rather than an imposition. They both kept their eyes open now, watching each other, working on this together. He was disconcerted to realise how far they'd moved on from his initial wish to pretend they were just two strangers using each other to get off. 

"God! Yes, Jim... just like that, more like that...."

"Are you approving of me?" demanded Jim with a wicked twist to his hips that sent flares of pleasure sparking up Pike's spine. "The world must be about to end."

"Keep on doing that and you'll have all the approval you want," groaned Pike. 

"Of course. This is what I'm famous for."

Somewhere in the back of Pike's lust-addled mind he caught the wry edge in Kirk's voice, caught the echo of things said at the start of this debacle. He shook his arms free so that he could reach up and grasp Jim's face in his hands, holding firm to the sharp edges of cheek and jaw bone, feeling both the strength and vulnerability contained in the lithe body. "You don't need my approval. You are extraordinary, no matter what anyone else thinks. Don't sell yourself short."

Kirk stilled and lifted his hands to cover Pike's, lacing their fingers together. "Sir... Chris--" He turned his face to kiss Pike's fingers one after the other, the touch agonisingly gently in contract to the rough thrusts of the fucking up until now. "Chris, please don't be angry with me for getting you off the Narada. No, shhh...." Kirk blocked Pike's surprised objection with fingers pressed firmly down across his mouth. "You need to understand. I know she wasn't my ship. I know I was only acting captain and nobody's choice for that role. But for that brief time I _was_ captain. They were my people. _You_ were my people. I sat through all your strategy classes in the Academy. _We don't leave our own behind._ You said that. Out there, you were one of my own. Leaving you was never an option."

Pike looked up into limpid blue eyes, begging his understanding in their earnestness. He'd been a captain for so long - and a captain often in disagreement with his peers and his commanders - that he'd half forgotten what it felt like to serve under a great leader, to live with the security and confidence of the tightly-knit team. For all the intense loyalty offered by great crew - and he'd had great crew, particularly with Boyce and One on the Yorktown - the captain always stood apart, elevated to a cold, lonely pinnacle. A pinnacle Kirk had now been thrust onto despite having had little chance to experience what it meant to be part of a great team. 

Pike hated being beholden to other people, he knew that about himself. And he knew that that independence, while bringing him many benefits, had its drawbacks too. "One of yours, hmmm?" 

Despite being buck-naked and buried balls-deep in Pike's ass, Kirk still managed to blush. "I didn't mean--"

"I know what you meant." Pike ran a hand idly across the firm expanse of Kirk's chest. "I know what you mean. And that connection never leaves you, Jim. The ones I've saved over the years, they are all still mine, they matter to me." He let his hand track up to Kirk's face, follow the straight line of his nose, trace across a curved eyebrow. "I guess you're stuck with me." He pushed upwards to brush his mouth against Kirk's, offering a brief tease of his tongue to the full lower lip. "And I'm finding that I can live with that thought."

Kirk's tired face broke into a broad grin, a generous curve of pure pleasure. Not his cocky grin or his calculating one, not his smug smirk or his seductive smile, just unadulterated happiness. "Then I'd better look after you really, _really_ well." He punctuated the statement with a sudden twist and thrust of hips and Pike's head thumped back down onto the pillow as the thick cock in his ass set a pool of pleasure rippling through his groin. 

"Let me," begged Kirk, now pushing into him again with long, deep thrusts, frustratingly slow, agonisingly thorough. "Let me take care of you. Let me make you feel so very, very good."

" _Still_ talking, Kirk?" Pike clamped down with his ass muscles, a steady tightening squeeze that produced a very satisfying squeak of surprise from the other man. "Get _on_ with it."

"Bossy," muttered Kirk, slowly picking up the pace with his thrusts. "Should've known you'd be one for orders, even flat on your back. I've always wanted this, you know. I had a whole plan. I was going to get a posting on the Enterprise, was going to make the bridge crew. I knew you wouldn't fuck a cadet, figured you wouldn't do crew either. I was going to learn all I could from you, and the very day I finally made captain, I was going to drag you into the nearest convenient room and fuck you blind."

"You'd planned _that_ far ahead?" asked Pike in disbelief. 

"God yes! You're sex on a stick. Don't you know that? Power and command and competence and hot, hot, _hot_. Everything I wanna be!"

Pike found himself shuddering with laughter in ways that seemed to do good things to Kirk's cock, buried so deep in his own body. The young man grabbed Pike's prick with a hand slick with lube and began a delicious cock-screwing pull, with his thumb sliding across the sensitive head, teasing the slit. "You're gonna come on my cock, sir. Come for me, hard and long and oh so good!"

And Pike realised Kirk was right. His balls were pulling up and a wildfire of arousal was flaring up in his groin. The pain, the fear, the grief, the guilt - all lost in the tumultuous rush for blinding orgasm. Giving up all attempts at control, he slumped back on the pillows and gave his pleasure-slack body up to Kirk as the young man raced at a punishing pace his own climax. "Sir... Chris... God, so hot, so fucking amazing!"

* * *

Kirk lifted his head from where he'd been resting on Pike's chest. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"At _this_ point?" said Pike, trying to sound incredulous but coming closer to fond exasperation. "Well, what is it?"

"I can see why you made Admiral, sir. You're one hell of a fine lay!" Kirk offered a cocky grin but something about his eyes suggested that he wasn't quite sure how this would be taken.

Pike hesitated for a moment, caught on the cusp of being offended by the cheek of this young pretender of a captain. And then he let it go, thumped his head back on the pillow and began to laugh. To really laugh, deep spasms from his diaphragm that dislodged Kirk from his chest, that shook him to his core, dislodging the filth of fear and anger and humiliation. It was the first time he'd laughed aloud since the morning when he'd walked into the sim centre to watch Kirk tackle that damned KM test for the third time. 

He ran a hand through Kirk's thick blond hair. "Keep combining the cheek with the charm, add the occasional dose of common sense, and you'll do just fine out there, Jim. You'll do me proud."

Kirk, now leaning on one elbow, his other hand carding gently through Pike's chest hair as if the Admiral was some kind of cat, spoke again, sounding oddly careful. "It would mean a lot to me to have your blessing, sir." He caught Pike's raised eyebrow. "To really have it, I know PR speak when I see it."

Pike gave him a rueful grin. "Yes, I guess you do. You've had a crash course in the last few weeks anyway." He took a moment to consider the matter. Now that he knew Kirk had seen through his earlier statements of support, he knew that the young man deserved a truthful response. 

Could he do this? Could he say this in all honesty? He realised that - finally - he could. 

He ran a hand gently down Kirk's cheek. "You have my blessing, son. And I mean it. I'm sure you can understand that I am never going to be entirely happy handing over my girl in these circumstances. And that is not a slight on you. There's not an officer in the Fleet that I consider - in my heart - to be good enough. Admiral Archer himself could drop a 100 years off his age, keep all his current experience, and I'd still consider him unworthy of her. But you..." He caught Kirk's chin in his hand, looked steadily into the other man's deep blue eyes, "You are as good as any and better than most. She's yours now, your adventure to have. And it's time I looked forward to finding my own next adventure."

Kirk caught Pike's hand and brought it to his lips, kissing each of the knuckles and then turning the hand over to kiss the palm. "Whatever you do from now on, sir, you'll always have my support." 

Pike grinned back at him, an easy, honest smile the likes of which he'd almost forgotten how to give. "Tomorrow, Jim. Tomorrow we'll get back to your inventory problems and my future plans." He threaded his hand into Kirk's hair and pulled on it gently. "For now come up here and show me how grateful you are for the gift of my ship."

With a broad smile Kirk wriggled his way up Pike's body in as provocative a manner as he could manage and set about showing that he was very grateful indeed. 

\- THE END -


End file.
